Rhetoric Society of America

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Ten Reasons NOT To Go The 2010 RSA Convention

TEN REASONS NOT TO GO THE 2010 RSA CONVENTION

I'm sure that many of you remember that Jack Selzer, our excellent 2008 program coordinator, sent a message before the Seattle convention listing ten good reasons why you should submit a proposal and come to the meeting. The message was in character for Jack, who is an upbeat, positive sort of person, but being a more negative type, I thought it best to try the other approach and to provide ten good reasons for staying away. They are:

10. Only weather wimps go to Minneapolis when it's not snowing.

9. Choices are confusing, and a hotel in the City Center of Minneapolis offers too many choices for dining, shopping, and entertainment.

8. Expensive taxi rides help stimulate the economy, and the option of a two dollar light-rail ride from the airport to the City Center just doesn't seem patriotic.

7. The bars and night-spots in the Target area near the City Center are too low-brow.

6. The Guthrie Theatre is too high-brow.

5. The new Twins baseball stadium near the hotel is too middle-brow.

4. The very idea of young scholars meeting together and sharing their work in a Research Network raises the scary possibility that cooperation is a good thing and that new ideas may emerge from the conference.

3. Meeting, talking with, and listening to scholars from China, South Africa, Israel, Japan, Denmark, Germany, France, and other countries is so not interesting.

2. Supersessions on topics such as Rhetoric and Public Deliberation, Rhetoric and American Pragmatism, Rhetoric and Public Memory, Rhetoric and Modernism, New Developments in Rhetorical Theory, and Teaching Rhetorical Criticism have too much rhetoric in them.

1. Rhetoric isn't important.

REMEMBER THAT THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS COMING FAST UPON US-SO IF YOU DON'T WANT TO PARTICIPATE, PLEASE HURRY AND DON'T GO TO THE RSA WEBSITE AND SUBMIT A PROPOSAL BY SEPTEMBER 18.